Which national economies will benefit most in a world of extended supply chains and open trade? Today, the obvious response seems to be the Asian nations. They'll certainly be the fastest growing air freight markets.

Asia has become the world's factory floor - a low-cost, highly-productive region to outsource the manufacture of goods and services. Those goods and services fill up aircraft cargo holds of ever-larger aircraft headed for the Western hemisphere.

But Asia could become even more connected to the U.S. and Europe as it evolves from producer to dynamic consumer market to an emerging source of ideas about products.

The possibilities of this yet unraveling Asia outsourcing story surfaced at a recent UPS sponsored global conference in Paris - the second in the company's series of Longitudes gatherings in different regions around the world.

Speaking on the impact of Asia on European commerce, Arnoud De Meyer, professor of technology management at INSEAD, challenged participants to think of Asia in a new light.

"Of course, Asian nations have become great places to source goods and services," De Meyer said. "But think of them also as presenting Europe and the U.S. with market opportunities, and with ideas."

De Meyer believes we're really just at the beginnings of an interconnected global economy that's characterized by increasing cross-border cargo and package trade and networking technologies like the Internet. That economy's infancy has been greatly influenced by an entirely new way of looking at supply chains.

Producers, such as manufacturers and retailers, now use sophisticated supply chain resources to extend their production-to-customer linkages around the world - an approach that drives top and bottom line growth.

Thus far, a shining star of the supply chain revolution has been manufacturing sourcing opportunities in Asia. In China alone, more than a billion dollars in foreign direct investment arrives each week.

That business explosion has catapulted China to become the world's sixth largest economy. It's expected to be the second most active trading nation by the end of the decade.

Of course, outsourcing of production to China has also siphoned manufacturing and services jobs from the West. On the other hand, the "China price" of imports has held down inflation and put money in American and European consumers' pockets. And then there's the impending market opportunity presented to Western nations - a gold field waiting to be mined.

According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, between 250 and 300 million Chinese people can now be classified as middle class. This number is expected to more than double by the year 2020. Right now, China's domestic market is the world's fourth largest for consumer electronics. It's snapping up Western staples like TVs, DVD players and cell phones. Each month, five million new subscribers in China sign up for mobile phone service. New China housing construction is also exploding, growing by 33 percent a year. The home improvement market in China is estimated at $50 billion annually.

For developed Western economies, the emergence of China and other Asian national economies has been a paradox - an immediate source of anxiety on the one hand, yet a growing export opportunity on the other. Although the U.S. has an escalating trade deficit with China, its overall ratio of exports to imports is about even. Europe and particularly Japan have become major exporters into China.

That said, it's significant to note that weekly air cargo trade service between the U.S. and China will triple this spring compared to a year ago.

That presents even more lanes and more convenience for U.S. companies to re-examine Asia export opportunities. Certainly, Asia has caused forward-thinking companies to re-examine and re-define supply-chain networks.

In addition to his optimistic views on exporting to Asia, De Meyer also offered this thought for Western business leaders regarding their home markets: "Great ideas will spring from research and development in Asia and from Asian customers. Those ideas may well have an impact on what we do in Europe and the U.S. And the first people who can sense those ideas, bring them back, and roll them out in the U.S. and Europe will be the ones who will be successful."